I just finished reading this book, Your Republic is Calling You, about a North Korean spy who lives for two decades in South Korea, awaiting his orders. He only hears from the North once, early on, to murder someone blahblah, but then he just goes about his way and lives a normal life, goes to college, gets married, has a good job, raises a child....and then he gets the key message from the North that translates to mean it's time to come home to the mother land.

The book is focused on his life on that one day when he gets the message, with flashbacks to his days in training, college, etc. It introduces other people in his life, other spies, family members, side stories...it flows really well for touching on so many things, though I have to admit that sometimes I wasn't sure who belonged to which story. I think part of that might be due to me translating the Korean names into Korean names of kids I used to teach there...you know, to make it more personal to me, I guess. It was a little slow at first - this helped keep me interested.

What I most enjoyed about this book was that he spoke of places I have actually been - like Gangwon Province-we LIVED there! And he wrote about Lotte World - hello, copycat Disneyland-been there. And the Namdaemun market - love it there.

It's an interesting story - it wasn't my favorite, but a good story nonetheless. I don't know that I would even strongly suggest anyone read it, unless you lived in South Korea and want to reminisce, but it's a good story to think about.

And think about it I did...and I told Andrew about it and we discussed how weird that would be to know someone for a long time and then find out they are a spy.

And then we realized - there are a lot of people we know who are probably spies.

A lot of people we know are actually spies.

We were able to easily identify some suspicious behaviors and tell-tale signs in a LOT of people we know!

It was a little surprising to discover this...but it is what it is...

I won't call you all out...but just know that we're on to you.
We won't tell anyone (yet) - but we KNOW.

Just know that we know, and that's all. When you go back to your homeland with whatever secrets you have collected, we will not be shocked.

Imagine you swallow a hand towel, which gets stuck in your throat.
And the hand towel is on fire.
And has spikes.

And is stuck in the back of your throat.

That's how I feel right now.
I think I've been awake for about 5 hours in the last 48.

And THIS is something I will not miss when Andrew goes to college. He had the exact same symptoms last week (though I didn't fully comprehend the throat pain).

I was very careful-made him wash his hands a lot, avoided him as much as possible, tried to contain the sickness....but I think I got this particular illness out of pure karmic payback...

Ya see, the first day Andrew wasn't feeling well, I was being a good mommy and offered to go out to our local Panera Bread and get him some delicious tomato soup and a smoothie. I was going to go to Jamba Juice next door for a smoothie, but Panera is now selling berry smoothies, so I bought one of those. And I couldn't just bring it home without making sure it wasn't any good-so I had to taste it, right?

And I found that Panera berry smoothies are THE BEST. And...it's a good seven minutes to my house and I hit every red light on the way home....and I had to take a sip each time I stopped-just to marvel at how great it was. Before I knew it, I was home and the smoothie was half gone. Oops.

Andrew was furious, and then he didn't like the soup, which made him even more upset.

I have an awesome group of friends who get together once a month for games night. Saturday was our night and we had such a fun time.

We covered a LOT...starting with a potluck of some delicious food, and then moving quickly into the debate over dark chocolate. When planning our night, the email string took on a challenge to find the best and highest percentage of dark chocolate, which is our crowd pleaser.

We thought 86% was high, but then that was one-upped by the 87%, but then it went out of control crazy when someone found a 90% dark chocolate.

The contestants - though the Hershey Nuggets were eliminated for potential forgery.

Potential fraud taking place in the competition.

The 3 contenders!

There was a LOT of debate and discussion and thoughtful conversation going on about the best dark chocolate. Ultimately, the 90% wasn't the best, though it had an interesting texture to it. I think 87% was the crowd favorite.

Our night also included a belated birthday celebration for our favorite Canadian, Denis. I made a weight watchers red velvet cake, but left the frosting off the one edge, as it's milk-based and not everyone can partake in dairy. The frosting, though very very low in calories, was not easy to spread, and not easy to look pretty, but it tasted fairly good.

He refuses to admit his age, so the #1 candle had to represent all the birthdays he's had.

We had a fairly in-depth discussion about how some of us actually think things through about "what would I do if someone entered the room with a gun right now?" Sad that we have to think about these things, but it's reality, right? You just NEVER KNOW.

Young Natalie actually has a mental plan of how she will be taking the gunman down. We had a wonderful demonstration and I'm sure we all learned some valuable tips.

Not an actual gunman.

Important part - twist the arm until the gun falls out of his hand (screaming is optional, but seems to be fitting).

Quickly move to pick up the gun off the ground and....well, that's where the lesson stopped. I guess run to safety with the weapon might come next...

We all had a very long discussion on folding shirts, that came about because one of the group (a Canadian perhaps) doesn't really know how to fold a shirt. A true bachelor I guess, but he literally would just lay all his shirts flat and pile one on top of the other and keep them on a dresser or shelf. I had no idea this went on in the world....I really just assumed that all adults know how to do this, but that's what you get for assuming, right?

Anyway, this particular person has a device to help him fold properly:

Picture stolen from his fb page.

Has anyone heard of this?? I had no idea this was going on in the world. I'm so sheltered sometimes.
Anyway, he's very excited to have this device because it allows for him to properly fold his shirts in less than 4 minutes and with "no wrinkles" - though when I showed him the 8 second way that I fold a shirt (like normal humans do), he argued that I have a crease down the middle of my shirt lengthwise...but I'm certain when I put the shirt on, there is no crease. AND if you look at his neatly folded shirts above--you'll note that he will have a crease horizontally, so regardless of how you do it-there will be a mandatory crease. I'm just sayin....

Struggling without a tshirt folding apparatus.

Anyway....we had such a fun night-we covered a million more things I can't talk about (for legal and parental reasons), and a bunch of stuff that would just bore you if I went in-depth about.
We also played a Trivial Pursuit Team Edition game - these were our teams:

Team One:

Team Two:

Team Three:

You would think Team Three would win....given that we had six extra people, plus Andrew and his friend came in at the end to help....but no....Team Two won. Congrats Team Two.....Sorry if we all came across as if we hated you for just a little bit at the end of the game. It's not personal.

After months of planning and months of putting it out there to everyone I know that I am looking for donations (I swear I didn't beg!), my co-planner, Tara, and I somehow pulled through with this project we call Creation Station - Family Day, which we hosted at Bienestar, a local non-profit working with very low-income families (mostly migrant workers).

The project was a new idea that we developed, based off an event that Tara attended while on vacation in San Francisco (yes, her family volunteers while ON VACATION!). It was a family fair type event that was meant to teach and empower low-income families while community-building. I believe you can say that we were successful with all of these things!

Our Creation Station had six different stations and goals:

First Aid station: teaching basic first aid, while providing each person with a take-home first aid kit, consisting of an ace bandage, 10 bandaids, neosporin, 3 gauze pads, a gauze wrap, disposable gloves, and some Mr. Yuk stickers. The volunteer at that station spoke to each item and then each child got to put them in a large baggie with their name on it.

Cards for Kids station: making cards for kids in the hospital - a great way for families who are normally on the receiving end to be on the other side and feel the joy of giving back to others.

Photography station: most low-income families do not have regular photos taken of themselves, and being a photo-nut, it's important to me to incorporate this when I can.

Cooking station: Nutritious and easy snacks that they can make from items they probably already have, but don't necessarily think to put together.

Crocheting station: a talent that can live with them for life! I learned when I was young and never forgot. Once you learn, you can easily make blankets or scarves with just a basic stitch! Handy skill to know.

Thank You card station: for our donors. It's important for the families to acknowledge those who gave, and it's great for the donors to receive a handwritten note.

We started collecting supplies in October, though we should have pushed harder for big donors (lesson learned), we ended up with everything we needed in the end.

This was just half the supplies for the first aid station!

Putting together first aid kits.

Thank you card station-looks busy!!

Making cards for sick children.

Crocheting! I taught so many people!!!

This boy tried REALLY hard for a long time and finally it just clicked and he did it! He didn't want to try to learn any more-just a basic stitch...which meant he couldn't do the corner. So by the time we were done, he had about a 6-foot long chain.

Photo session! These were my crocheting buddies. The mom spoke almost NO english but she spent about 60 minutes with me and we "talked" about different stitches and things we've made. I think I told her that I have made four baby blankets that are at home. Either that or I told her I have four babies at home. Regardless - she was great fun!I did piece together that she was making elaborate crochet pieces and sending them home to her family in Mexico. She even went home and got the patterns she followed to show me. She was awesome!

Chatting it up with some non-english speakers-fun working on my Spanish skills!

Cooking class, messy but fun!

These were awesome snacks!!

A special creation. I'm not sure how this was eaten...

Drawing for the door prizes at the end of the day-we had a crowd of very eager kids!

Can she be cuter? Probably not...

This was so much fun and I have already heard good things from Bienestar. We are hoping to do this again in the future, one time for just parents, another time for just kids. It was a HUGE undertaking and a bit of stress, but it all just came together and we pulled it off!

There were just a few issues, of course nothing is ever perfect, right? The first was the number of volunteers who canceled on me. I called everyone...twice....to confirm they were attending, since it is a pilot project and we were depending on each volunteer. I have been guilty of having to cancel on a volunteer project in the past myself, everyone does at some point...but I had 4 cancel at the last minute, another person got lost and just never made it, and then another I never heard from at all (I talked to her 3 days ago). Frustrating. It happens. Not sure I could have done more to avoid the no-shows...I did more than I typically do to make sure we were covered.

Another issue in planning such a large project is that we really had no idea if we would be able to get what we needed. Both Tara and I ended up buying more than we probably would have chosen to, but that's the way it goes, right? Remember the backpack project last year, where I had no idea how I was going to come through and then it just kind of happened? I think I need to remember that not everything always works out so smoothly and I need to leave more time to make adjustments to the project, or have a Plan B.

I'm not complaining...just making note that these projects don't just magically happen. There is a lot of planning and stress on the backside.

So what is holding people back from trying? Why aren't more of us out there planning things?
Tara and I planned this project -just two people working together....and we made an impact.

My MLK day was spent living the vision of Martin Luther King, Jr. Every time I hear his speeches, or read his words, I am moved. He was just ONE man who made a HUGE difference in our world.
One person - changed the world. We should all strive to be more like him.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "Life's most persistent and urgent question is: 'What are you doing for others?'"

Andrew was accepted to the all-state choir competition this weekend (yay!). He packed his bags and jumped in a van this morning, so it's just me and the kitties all weekend long.

And a pile of movies, a puzzle, and a clean house! For 2 full days!!!

I'm going to eat whenever and whatever.

I'm going to watch what I want.

I'm going to revel in the fact that the next time I open the pantry door, there won't be an empty granola bar wrapper staring back at me.

And I'm going to miss this kid like crazy.

And this is just a sign of times to come.

In eight months, I will be missing him every day while he is away at college. EIGHT MONTHS!!! It doesn't seem like it's possible. I've never been without him....I might cry a lot. And drink too much. And whine a lot-right here. To all of you. Please start preparing yourself, as I am.

I think I learned to crochet back when I was barely in the double digits. It's one of those skills that stay with you. I wasn't a huge hobby of mine, but I could do it, and I did now and again. Then I probably went almost a decade without doing it....then picked it up again to make a few baby blankets when I was pregnant. Or rather, I started a few. I only actually finished one. When Andrew was little, he loved dinosaurs, as most little boys tend to do, and I had a pattern for a crocheted dinosaur that I started...and never finished.

But all those half-finished products I kept, along with a ton of yarn in a yarn bag that I've had in my closet for 17 years now. Untouched. For 17 years. We moved approximately seven times since the last time I actually did anything with that yarn bag...until now!

I have a big volunteer project I'm planning with my friend Tara, at the nonprofit where I had the backpack project last year. It's called Creation Station and it's going to be a gathering for the Bienestar residents, with the purpose of teaching and empowering. It's an experiment really...we don't know if 50 people will show or 250. And those that do show might not like it....but regardless, we'll do our best. I'll share more about it later, but the station that I'm leading is: teaching how to crochet. I know, you're laughing right? Remember I haven't done this particular activity myself for 17 years? And I have never tried to teach anyone. Much less a group.

Oh, and did I mention that it's highly likely that about 50% of the people attending will speak very little English? Bienestar serves mostly Hispanic families. My Spanish skills are limited.

I know some key phrases, like:

Lo siento, mi espanol es muy mal! (I'm sorry, my spanish is very bad)

No puedo ayudarle. (I can't help you)

No puedo comer ahora (I can't eat now)

No tengo gusto el usted. (I don't like you)

Hay un perro en mis pantalones. (There's a dog in my pants-I learned this from a teenager a few yrs ago, haven't used it yet)

I think a few of these will come in handy, but won't be very helpful in the actual project. Anyway, it'll all work out, it always does...

In preparation of my big debut as a crochet teacher, I had a few friends over to let me practice my skill-sharing. The plan is that I will attempt to teach a group of 8-12 people of all ages how to do a basic crochet stitch in a 20 minutes period.

Working with my four friends - it took us almost 20 minutes for me to teach them how to hold the yarn correctly and make their slipknot. I definitely don't think it was my friends who were the holdup. Did I mention I haven't done any crocheting for 17 years? True. And it shows.

But once we got going, it went a little more smoother, and it took just 20 more minutes to get to the second row. And there may have been some tears of frustration from the young ones, but really - nobody blamed her. It was really frustrating. I think what we learned was that teaching crochet is a skill I don't really have...but I think I will be able to make it work. The first hurdle was learning how to hold the yarn in your hand to make it "pull" through smoothly and making the slipknot to start. I can overcome that by having some simple instructions enlarged and printed to show people how to do this. And then we'll just hope for the best.

If anyone has any words of wisdom on how to teach this type of skill, or other great Spanish phrases to add to my list, or even just words of encouragement - please leave a message. Consider it your good deed of the day!

A little late on this, but I wanted to give a shout out to my old friend, The Year 2010! What a stupendous year 2010 was! Let's take a moment and review some of the wonderfulness that came about in 2010.

Leave a comment if you donated to one of my volunteer projects this year- you are awesome!

Visit one of my friends blog and leave a comment for Natalie (she needs blog-inspiration) and/or Tori (she recently lost her bff and could use some bloggy love) - then leave a comment here letting me know you did. You can earn two entries this easily!! (Tori and Nat are not excluded from this giveaway)

Blog about the giveaway - leave your blog link in your comment for an extra entry.

Giveaway ends on January 31st. Please make sure your email is on your profile, or leave your email in the comment. If I can't reach you, you can't win. I will email the winner and they will have 72 hours to claim their prize.

I volunteered at our local "soup kitchen" tonight, though we haven't ever served soup in all the dozen times I've been there.

I love this event for many reasons:

It really puts your own life and troubles into perspective seeing others who are cold, dirty and just really grateful to be given the choice of which (sometimes) stale dessert they can have with their meal.

It's work that leaves you feeling fulfilled. It's a short time period-just 2-2.5 hours, but you're busy the entire time.

It's well-organized and a wonderful project to serve others.

It helps me feel connected to the community at large - I don't want to be one of those people who don't "see" the homeless. I want to acknowledge them as humans and let them feel some kindness from another human being.

I don't like going to this particular event for a few reasons:

It's a messy job. We clean up after serving food to roughly 80-120 people each time. Not just like, oh, let's put away our stuff...but like, let's scrub away every bit of evidence that any human or any food was here. We leave that place CLEAN. Tonight I was sweeping one side of the room when I saw a man drop a piece of red velvet cake (side note:every drop of this cake should be cherished because it's the best cake in the world!) and before I could get over to his side of the room, he had kicked it, smearing it across the floor and his shoe, and then stepped in the remaining pile, as the person across from him stepped in the other. I'm not sure why he wasn't saying: huh, where'd my cake go? I mopped up that smeared red velvet later. Thanks buddy.

It's on a work night and goes until 9:30pm. Am I the oldest and lamest person in the world? I just don't like to be out on weeknights.

It's a scary part of town. I haven't seen anything bad happen but I hear of it. And I'd like to think that the person I just served a meal to would be helpful and friendly to me out on the street, but honestly-a lot of them are mentally ill or drinking/drugged. One guy will never ever ever ever make eye contact with me. I see him every few weeks and smile and try to be as friendly as possible-and I get nothin. It's fine. I'm used to rejection. Most people are super nice and happy to have someone smile at them so they make up for Mr No Eye Contact. And tonight there was a guy who didn't break eye contact once. Every time I looked at him, he stared at my eyes as if he was dissecting them mentally. I don't want to consider what was really going on in his head. He was a little off-putting with his stare. But most people are just lovely, a lot are...really..but not all.

Tonight I spoke to an interesting man, a middle eastern, who was a vegetarian and highly distrustful of the desserts I was serving. He came back and spoke to me after the line was served and he was quite nice. I had about a 10-minute conversation with a homeless man from an arabic culture about being vegetarian. Lovely, we're new friends now....great. I love having new friends.

Then the part of the night comes where we need to get rid of the food. We have to give it away or throw it away (the bread and desserts anyway). I was on dessert - so I took my big bowl of cookies out to see if I could get rid of them. And I was quite successful. Some guys had paper bags so they asked me to fill 'em up, which I partially did for a few of them. And then I headed to the back of the kitchen to put some other things away. After a few minutes, my new arabic friend came up to the counter and leaned over and smiled and so I approached and asked him if he needed anything and this was our conversation:

Man: You're killing them.
Me: I'm sorry?
Man: You are killing them.
Me: Killing them?
Man: The cookies!! The cookies are not good for them. All the sugar you just gave them (gesture wildly to the room at large), it's not good!
Me: Oh...um...the cookies?
Man: Yes! You gave them so much sugar and now they are going to leave here and eat all that because they have nothing else! You are killing them. We are just ruining our society with all the sugar in our food and they come here for food and you give them so much sugar that the food doesn't do any good!
Me: Oh....yes......I guess that is true....

And so it goes...I have maybe killed some innocent homeless people with my actions tonight. With my slightly stale leftover-holiday cookies of death. In xmas tree shapes with sprinkles.

We finished the conversation with a short talk about how people want to help, but they don't know how and instead of donating cookies, people should donate some money, clothes or a warm place to sleep or books to learn from or a car to get to work.

So next time you want to help the homeless...eat your own cookies of death. Donate a shirt.

Because I love you all, I thought I'd share a wonderful little excel trick with you that I recently shared with some coworkers.

Let's say you have a list of something and you have already typed a bunch of it, but then looking it over, you wish you could go back and make it all in caps.

Well sometimes wishes come true! Here's a step by step guide to fixing this without having to retype everything - because Excel does magic all the time.

Here's my original list:
Pick a column next to your text and type in a cell: =Upper(Once you start typing it, it will try to auto-populate the formula - it's part of the magic trick. Don't be alarmed. It wants to help you find the right formula. Because it's nice.

Typing an equals sign tells Excel you are going to use a formula. Your formula here is Upper. Then you tell it what you want to be in upper case by putting something in the ( ). You can just type one of the parenthesis and it will add the ending one in this formula. Once you type the formula: =Upper( -click on the cell you want to make uppercase. It will look like this:

Now your formula disappears in that cell and it will create your text in that new cell, in upper case, just like you wanted! Thank you Excel!!

But you're not done yet!!

What about the rest of your list? You don't want to have to type your newly-learned formula into each cell, right? Of course not.

You can very easily just drag your formula down your entire list.
Click on the cell with the formula. In the bottom right of the selected cell, you'll see a little black square. That square is your friend.

Click and hold, then drag it down to the cells below it, like this:

If you have numbers in your column, listed underneath your text, it's not a problem - it will just copy your number over.

So now you have your data in your new column. Perfect...but it's not in the right column. If you just delete your first row, the formula will break. This is a quick and easy way to fix everything.

Select your new cells or the entire column if you just copied the formula down the whole column.

Select Copy.

Now we're going to paste the values of those cells. You can't just do a normal Paste, so click on the paste option and choose Paste Special and choose Paste Values (or just paste values depending on your version), like this:

Done.

You can paste it right over the formulas or you can paste it in the original cells. But paste it you must.

This might sound like a lot of steps, but I assure you it's not.

And if you have a long list of data that you want to be upper case, this is really your easiest way to do it (without learning how to write code and such).

﻿

I showed this to my coworkers and one of them immediately said: this is too hard. The other one said: I'll never remember that.

This was discouraging, so it's up to you-my beloved readers, to try this, love this, and report back that you appreciate the magic of Excel. Otherwise, I'll go to sleep sad. You don't want that on your shoulders, do you? Thanks!

a little late on this posting...it's just been sitting here waiting for me to hit Publish! Blogger fail #1 of the year.

For the fourth year in a row, I hosted a popular volunteer project where normal people came together on a weekend afternoon and created some amazing holiday ornaments/decorations for a local non-profit. This is something simple that anyone can do - just all a few local nonprofits, usually residence centers of some sort, and ask if they could use them. Easy!

For my projects (I have this twice in December), I provide a mish-mash of supplies, it looks like a garage sale exploded on the supply tables, and then I just sit back and let people amaze me. And they really do amaze me! Every year, I see the most incredible decorations created by the end of our two-hours.

My favorite reindeer of the year!

My Medusa ornament...

Note my Medusa up in the top left - I added a little bandanna to her and changed her to a more holiday-friendly babushka.

My friend Tara and I were making separate ornaments - she had this ball of feathers and I had a square face with no real plans for where I was going - and we somehow ended up with this awesome feather ornament that some senior man is going to LOVE.

Alison's puffy-ball covered ornament - it was super cute and this pic doesn't do it justice.

One of the tables with the finished products!

Cassidy working hard!

John, Abbey and Tara creating masterpieces.

Love this little baby Jesus!

Abbey's snowman - LOVE the outstretched arms.

Teeny, tiny clothespin reindeer!

I love the holidays - the amount of people who volunteer, and the enthusiasm and energy that they bring, is so inspiring.

And this ends the holiday posts for at least 11 months. I'll miss them.....but stay tuned for more volunteer posts.

I have a big giveaway coming this week!!! You don't want to miss out, so come back soon.

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Everybody can be great...Because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace - A soul generated by love.